Hello, people. So, I'm having trouble with a couple of songs I'm mixing and I'd reaaaallly appreciate if somebody around here could give me a hand, because this is something really important to me and I don't really know what to do. It's kind of a long story, so it's ok if you don't wanna read all of it, but I'm truly desperate.

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I'm no producer, but I enjoy recording and mixing the songs I write. I just listen to them and tweak things around until they sound good. I make the drum parts with a drum machine, export the audio and put it in Studio One, where I record the guitars and bass guitar (the later being my guitar through a bass amp simulator, since I don't own a bass guitar).

Where I live (Venezuela) there's an annual festival made entirely for new/amateur bands. My band's barely a year old, though the guys and I have been playing occasionally for aproximately 3 years. And I had this idea of making "demos" of our songs the way I always do, and send them to the festival web to see if we could get in this year. They're not all high quality, but since I've got nothing to lose, I decided to give it a try.

I finished 3 songs in a 3 week space, since I have next-to-nothing little spare time at home to do this. I did it all by myself, then "surprised" my band mates showing them the songs and telling them my idea about sending them to see if we could enter this new bands's festival. I asked them if they had any critics on the song, and the drummer told me that maybe I could change a couple of patterns here and there. So I was going to fix those patters, add a couple more, in order to have the "final" versions of these demos, and send them for the festival thing.

I fixed the patterns, exported the drum tracks and went and put them in Studio One just like I originally did. My surprise was that the tracks, at some point, weren't synchronized with the guitars and vocals. I thought I might have positioned the track wrong. I triple checked this. The tracks were still "out of time". No matter where I put them.

I checked that I hadn't changed the tempo of the tracks in my drum machine, and I hadn't. I carefully checked the waveform of the drum tracks, looking for delays or something, and there weren't. So I'm really confused and I don't know what to do. I'd really appreciate if you could help me. I have uploaded the tracks to a Dropbox, because a friend was going to help me out today, but he didn't, and I have until Friday to send the songs. So, if you wanna take a look at them, let me know.

tl;dr I made drum parts for a couple of songs using a drum machine, later changed them, but they didn't fix the song anymore even though they had the same tempo, and I'm going crazy trying to figure out WTF happened.

Assuming that you are importing the drums as a stereo wav file.... are you?

Is it possible that you imported the new tracks at a different sample rate then the rest of the song tracks?

For instance... The song itself is recorded at 44.1khz, but the drum track is at 48khz, and didn't get converted. Or vice-versa... the song is at 48khz, but the drum tracks are at 44.1.

This will result in the length of the drum track relative to the rest of the song tracks being about 10% longer or shorter.

CT

Yes, I'm exporting them to wav files. The thing is, thought I don't know much about sample rates, I didn't change anything at all between tracks. Nothing. The song is at 44.1khz, I don't know how to check the sample rate of a track (I didn't see an option to set it up on my drum machine), so I can't tell for sure if it is 44.1 or 48. I was checking the windows wav file information, and it says the first track is 705 kbps, while the second track is 1536 kbps. Does that have anything to do with the delay?

Quote:

Originally Posted by radkins2

Does the tempo start on at the beginning and drift off as you get further into the song? How far off are we talking? Seconds or fractions of a beat. If it is seconds I agree with the above post.

If it is fractions of a beat it sounds like a slight difference in the clocking of the two machines. I would try locking them with midi clock or midi time code.

Fractions of a beat, and I feel the delay kind of gets longer as the song plays. But, again, I don't know how could the tracks have different sample rates, since I didn't change anything at all.

Yes, I'm exporting them to wav files. The thing is, thought I don't know much about sample rates, I didn't change anything at all between tracks. Nothing. The song is at 44.1khz, I don't know how to check the sample rate of a track (I didn't see an option to set it up on my drum machine), so I can't tell for sure if it is 44.1 or 48. I was checking the windows wav file information, and it says the first track is 705 kbps, while the second track is 1536 kbps. Does that have anything to do with the delay?

Bingo!

The first track is either a mono track at a bit depth of 16 bits and sample rate of 44.1 khz, or a stereo track at 8 bits at a sample rate of 44.1khz. The second is a stereo track at 16 bits and at a sample rate of 48 khz.

CT

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Could I get some more talent in the monitors, please?

The first track is either a mono track at a bit depth of 16 bits and sample rate of 44.1 khz, or a stereo track at 8 bits at a sample rate of 44.1khz. The second is a stereo track at 16 bits and at a sample rate of 48 khz.

CT

So, that was it. Any idea how can I fix it? I don't think that simply "converting" the file anyhow to 44.1 will fix it (I don't know if that's even possible).

If it is fractions of a beat then it is not a sample rate issue. Two seperate computers can be recording at the same example rate and they might not line up perfectly due to clock errors. No real way to fox it except with elastic audio or locking them together with time code and re bouncing them.